What's Wrong with Judaism Anyway?

So in becoming the ultimate debater and polemicist I'm always looking for new material I can use when defending and explaining my stances and ideas. With Christianity and Islam there is so much good material to use and examples to refer to, my five year old could debate someone as to the ills of those religions. But I've found that when it comes to Judaism it's not so cut and dry. I have material but it's not as solid as what I have for the other two monotheisms. For example we all know that:

- the god of the Old Testament is a violent, angry, jealous, psychopathic murderer. He demands obedience and then commands his generals or angels to kill those who reject him. His commandments tell us essentially not to "think" about things. So to want to follow such a person, to me, is immoral.

- Judaism subjugates women (although this happens much more within the orthodox sects of the religion)

- like the other two, indoctrination of children begins immediately.

- the claims about and the violence in Israel are because of these mythical claims of land promised to them. People, children, have and will die because they fight over this claim.

And that's pretty much all I got! We can't really go with the circumcision argument anymore because many recent studies have shown there are more and more health benefits to having one. We can't point to any post-old testament massacres by the Jewish people and unlike the crusades and wars of conquest of the other two, Jews for the most part, aside from the conquest of Israel, have been a fairly peaceful people.

Insofar as their opinions, if you watch a debate with some of the more liberal Rabbis, you will see that they view the religion as a very much opened minded one. They have no hell, and many of the original scholars left much of the "word" open to interpretation. There is a great debate with Hitch, Harris and two Rabbis where, for much of the time, the Rabbis agree with everything Hitch and Harris say. Now there still are the more hard-core Rabbis like Boteach that are just as ignorant on their stances as are the fundelementalist Christian theologians.

I don't know if I'm sounding like a Jewish apologist here. It might be because my family is Jewish and that was the original religion I was indoctrinated into when I was young. Regardless of the other reasons it's still the belief in the unbelievable and takes away our ability to think for ourselves. After all, I do not need 10 commandments to tell me how to live. Nevertheless I would love to hear your thoughts about this. Should I just KISS (keep is simple stupid) or do you all have some more persuading ideas?

The Bible still contains references to the polytheistic nature of Judaism.

For starters, Genesis 6:2 speaks of the "sons of God" which kind of undermines the whole concept, brought up in John 3:16, that god gave "his only son" to wash away all sin, or whatever.

Asherah is mentioned over 40 times in Deuteronomy, although Christian apologists have been trying to explain that away for centuries. Only under the religious reforms of Hezekiah did Judea take its final steps into monotheism. It was Hezekiah himself who "cut down the Asherah" - the pole symbolizing the widely recognized fertility goddess and wife of Yahweh.

Even the purported words of Yahweh himself, as given to Moses in stone, declare, "You shall have no other gods before me." So right there in the 3rd commandment, Yahweh is acknowledging the other gods. If Yahweh was the only god around, he would have said, "I am the one and only god, there are no others," rather than revealing his jealousy of the other known gods. It's the 3rd of the 10 commandments that form the foundation of the cult of Yahweh - Christianity being just one sect - and so even at the core we see the polytheistic references.

Now I realize our Christian friend will just say, "Aw hooey, you never even did any research," or something like that - but I have in fact cited my sources: something Christian apologists on this site never seem to do in return. At the base of it though, it is hard for all of us when we have to accept that we've been sucked in by a 4000 year old cult that is no different than another other ancient religion, with a pantheon of jealous gods fighting for power and playing out some sort of heavenly soap opera to entertain bronze age minds. It's hard, but a lot of us have had to swallow that pill.

All of the Jewish friends I've had - all my life, have been moderate. They have 'kept the culture', but seem to be more Agnostic than fundamentalist.. Of course, this is America, & they have assimilated. I think the ones I've has as friends aren't as dogmatic as so many Xians are. But of course, theyre not 'carrying all that Xian baggage' The devout Xians don't even realize that they are worshipping the sun god, just mis-spelling it.